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SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

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Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#311

Post by lucasbuick »

jtmcmc wrote: post #271
hasbroslasher wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bandcamp is fine, but it's not on the level that Soundcloud was for browsing music (or for hosting your own). It's still really limited on the social side - the only way you get "likes" is when people download your stuff, the discovery tools are limited to "what's popular in this tag today" and random curated content. There's no "feed" like Soundcloud had. Also, possibly the most irritating part of the site is that f…

I think bandcamp didn't take money - so they can operate as they want. I totally agree with you with respect to bandcamp being where cutting edge music lives.

Doesn't True Ventures have a stake in BandCamp?

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#312

Post by johnnyfaehell »

smrtinsert wrote: post #86
dustinmoris wrote: post #22

They also laid off the entire New York team and at least some individuals in Berlin: https://twitter.com/pje_txt/status/882977097232338947 https://twitter.com/katalunia_/status/882992899893460993 > Well, SoundCloud just laid off all of its New York engineering > Literally the entire payments and subscriptions team, ads-eng, monetization engineering, everybody > Not really clear to me how the execs think this company…

That says a lot. German labor laws protect their citizens strongly. I'm pretty sure they would always choose to get rid of other country staff first.

Yes but operational reasons such as we can't afford to pay them falls under a fair reason. Only issue could be they would have to a certain amount of notice, so it could be more costly.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#313

Post by jonbarker »

jonbarker wrote: post #40
cookiecaper wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

File hosting is just not a profitable enterprise. This pattern should be familiar by now: gain prominence by giving away tons of stuff to draw in users, and then clamp down when the bill comes due, resulting in a hard pivot that alienates the users. The truth is that users are not loyal. If you are offering something for free, they will be happy to take it, and they will have no qualms about moving on when you stop g…

Isn't facebook basically file hosting with a bunch of links?

Was actually just trying to create a counterpoint to the claim that file hosting services don't make money. Facebook is a hosting service for pictures and comments, and it makes money.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#314

Post by seltzered_ »

rhizome wrote: post #273
skore wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their investor called them "The Youtube of Audio" And now, of course, (and for quite a while) YouTube is the YouTube of audio. It should have been apparent that it was foolish to try and beat google on that turf. Google beat them easily with a simpler interface and raw performance. The biggest difference, though: The audio quality on YouTube is actually better . Nail after nail in the coffin.

Ain't no way I'm listening to mixes on YT when they put brickwall-compressed ads cutting in on un-normalized audio every 10 minutes. It's a non-starter; when I see those little yellow dots I hit the back button.

Have you used YouTube Red / the YouTube music app?

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#315

Post by CaptSpify »

Kalium wrote: post #305
CaptSpify wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep thinking about this problem, and music isn't the only industry affected. I wonder if this is us hitting some of the limits of capitalism? It's not that I mind paying, in fact, I want to support artists I like. But the entire ecosystem of media is set up in a way that it is just more efficient for everyone to get stuff for free. I feel like financial transactions get in the way more than they help, but this is…

I get it. You feel like maybe we're hitting some fundamental limitation of capitalism, whereby deserving artists aren't properly supported by the economic ecosystem around them. You're right in the media ecosystem is weird here. Music is relatively unique in that it is something that's easy to consume more or less piecemeal. Nobody reads only 1/12th of a book or watches 3/10ths of a movie, but these are common in how…

Take this with a grain of salt as economics is not my field but...

>You feel like maybe we're hitting some fundamental limitation of capitalism, whereby deserving artists aren't properly supported by the economic ecosystem around them.

It's actually the opposite. I would like the artists to get paid, but it's more that the payment barrier seems like a waste of time and energy.

> Couple this with a lowered barrier to entry and generally increased competition for entertainment dollars (which compete with mobile games, ebooks, etc.), and users have good reason to favor subscription models. Artists have yet to puzzle out how best to interact with this, but I have faith people will get there.

This is what I mean by seeing the limits. The subscription model makes no sense to me. It's inefficient at best, and it's clearly not working out.

It's not that I mind paying, it's that I don't want the work-flow for accessing new content to be limited by a payment barrier. But capitalism encourages the growth of artificial barriers for payment. It's just easier and a better use of time to bypass the payment method, even a subscription based one. It's more efficient for everyone if we could figure out a payment method and avoid that artificial barrier.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#316

Post by imhelpingu »

JohnnyConatus wrote: post #156

ITT no one admitting that the problem with the recorded music industry is now the fans who expect bits that make sound to be free while other bits are paid. Spotify, Pandora, and Soundcloud fixed just about everything that people said was wrong with the industry from the consumer point of view. And don't give me that line about the labels screwing artists because thanks to fans who won't even pay for a premium subscr…

It's not the artists who are struggling, it's the platform. By your logic, I'm oppressing Youtube creators because I didn't buy Youtube Red.

In terms of artists posting on Soundcloud, the fact that there's any demand for Soundcloud at all pretty much torpedoes this entire worldview you're espousing.

It is extremely common for artists to simply give away mixtapes on Soundcloud. When/if Soundcloud is gone, those same artists will continue to release on p2p networks. It is bizarre and delusional to believe that some valley person has to be making money off of it for me to listen to the music I like.

People sell things to make money. People make things for all kinds of reasons. Music is fundamentally an artistic venture, and everyone who tries to turn it into this other thing can frankly get completely bent imho.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#317

Post by imhelpingu »

rhizome wrote: post #267
JohnnyConatus wrote: post #156

ITT no one admitting that the problem with the recorded music industry is now the fans who expect bits that make sound to be free while other bits are paid. Spotify, Pandora, and Soundcloud fixed just about everything that people said was wrong with the industry from the consumer point of view. And don't give me that line about the labels screwing artists because thanks to fans who won't even pay for a premium subscr…

Why must the model of terrestrial radio always be left out of "customers are cheapskates" harangues?

Because it's a an irrelevant, circumstantial argument that is largely made-up to begin with.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#318

Post by spynxic »

tragic wrote: post #287
RickS wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cultural and product focuses that emphasized engagement quantity rather than engagement quality. Comments would be littered with things like "hey, great, check out my stuff!" That type of shallow "like for like" culture is absolutely cancerous for what was previously a very maker-heavy audience.

> Comments would be littered with things like "hey, great, check out my stuff!" > That type of shallow "like for like" culture is absolutely cancerous for what was previously a very maker-heavy audience. Man, I've been in there since day one practically and it was always like that, as has been every service of that kind I've ever used (hands up anyone who ever maintained an MP3.com playlist). Music runs on shameless…

Ideally, promoters would always be trusted experts. Question is: How do those experts, without engaging other promoters, discover potential tracks for promotion?

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#319

Post by hobo_mark »

tomcam wrote: post #303
kogepathic wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things I hate about Soundcloud I actually liked SoundCloud a lot, before they introduced SoundCloud Go. It wasn't perfect, but since it was free I didn't have an issue to live with the flaws. But they really burned all the goodwill they had with me and others when they introduced SoundCloud Go. Here's a list of the "features" of SoundCloud Go [0] and why it's difficult to accept them as a user: 1. Access the world’…

Your points are understandable. But what would your plan be to keep the doors open? They need to make money somehow. Not being sarcastic, am genuinely interested.

I'm a heavy SC user, listen to my "manually curated" (for lack of better words) timeline in background for hours a day (using global shortcuts in chrome to skip what I don't like), but what if I want to buy a song I like? I have to give my money to Bandcamp!

Also, 10 bucks to remove ads is ridiculous, their catalogue is tiny and with overwhelmingly obscure/indie music (at least for me), AND I have no idea if the artists will actually get any of it! Cut it in half, have some sort of revenue share and I'm in.

Re: SoundCloud cuts jobs, closes SF and London offices

#320

Post by kogepathic »

matclayton wrote: post #306
kogepathic wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things I hate about Soundcloud I actually liked SoundCloud a lot, before they introduced SoundCloud Go. It wasn't perfect, but since it was free I didn't have an issue to live with the flaws. But they really burned all the goodwill they had with me and others when they introduced SoundCloud Go. Here's a list of the "features" of SoundCloud Go [0] and why it's difficult to accept them as a user: 1. Access the world’…

Mixcloud Founder here, thanks for the support and if you ever have issues reach out. We're working hard on the app, but we're a super small team, so bear with us!

> Mixcloud Founder here, thanks for the support and if you ever have issues reach out.

Wow, awesome! Never thought anyone from either SoundCloud or MixCloud would read this.

Short list of improvements I would love to see:

1. If an artist uploads a tracklist for their mix, support seeking directly to a track within the mix (similar to a cue file) via the app or website.

2. Introduce a better way to seek in the app. When the mix is 1-2 hours long and all I have is a seek bar the width of my phone screen and a fat thumb, it's very difficult to seek to somewhere specific in the podcast. Something like 10 sec forward and 30 sec back buttons would already be a huge win.

3. Sometimes the mobile app plays the mix but all you get is silence. This seems to happen most frequently in the middle of a mix when there are connectivity issues. Closing the app and opening it again when you have better connectivity still results in blank sections of the mix. Super weird and very annoying!

But otherwise, yeah, please keep it up! Mixcloud has basically replaced the other music discovery services for me because it's got the content I want and it just works.

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